Description
By default, the ‘Comments’ section of the ‘Activity’ admin dashboard widget only shows an excerpt for the comments, truncating the content of the comments to the first 20 words while at the same time stripping out all markup.
This plugin adds a link at the end of the comment actions row (the links for the comment that become visible under the comment when you hover over the comment). The “Show more” link, when clicked, will replace the excerpt with the full comment. The full comment will include all markup, including originally utilized markup and changes applied via filters, plugins, etc (such as shortcode expansion, smilies, paragraphing, etc). The full comment can be switched back to the excerpt by clicking the “Show less” link (which replaces the “Show more” link when the comment is expanded).
“In-place expansion” refers to the ability to click the link to see the full comment and it will be presented in place of the excerpt without requiring a page reload or navigation.
NOTE: This plugin only works for users who have JavaScript enabled.
Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage
Hooks
The plugin exposes one filter for hooking. Such code should ideally be put into a mu-plugin or site-specific plugin (which is beyond the scope of this readme to explain).
c2c_expandable_dashboard_recent_comments_start_expanded (filter)
The ‘c2c_expandable_dashboard_recent_comments_start_expanded’ hook allows you to configure the ‘Recent Comments’ admin dashboard widget initially display all comments in their expanded state (i.e. not excerpted).
Arguments:
- $default (boolean): The default state, which is ‘false’ (therefore comments are initially shown excerpted)
- $comment (object) : The comment object being displayed
Example:
// Initially show dashboard comments fully expanded
add_filter( 'c2c_expandable_dashboard_recent_comments_start_expanded', '__return_true' );
Screenshots
A screenshot of the ‘Recent Comments’ admin dashboard widget with the plugin active, showing comments that have been truncated/excerpted by WordPress (the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th listed) and the entirety of 2 short comments. The truncated comments each display a “(show more)” link allowing for the full comment text to be seen. Also note the ‘Expand All’ and ‘Collapse All’ links added to the bottom of the widget. 
A screenshot of the ‘Recent Comments’ admin dashboard page with the plugin active, now showing the first excerpted comment (the second comment in the list) fully in-place expanded and with markup and formatting applied.
Installation
- Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or download and unzip
expandable-dashboard-recent-comments.zipinside the plugins directory for your site (typicallywp-content/plugins/) - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress
- Visit the admin dashboard and check out the ‘Comments’ section of the ‘Activity’ widget (assuming you have recent comments and that one or more of them have been automatically excerpted)
FAQ
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How do I expand an excerpted comment?
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When you hover over the comment, a line of action links will appear (typically “Approve”, “Reply”, “Edit”, “Spam”, and “Trash”). If the comment has been automatically excerpted by WordPress, then a “Show more” link will appear. Click it to view the full comment.
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Why don’t I see the “Show more” link when hovering over a comment?
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The comment has not been been excerpted; you are already seeing the comment in its entirety so there is no need to be able to “show more”.
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Why don’t I see the “Expand all” and “Collapse all” links at the bottom of the widget?
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Assuming you are using a supported version of WordPress and you have JavaScript enabled in your browser, this just means that none of the comments being listed have been excerpted, thus there is no need to be able to “Expand all” or “Collapse all” in this instance.
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Why does either of the “Expand all” or “Collapse all” links appear grayed out?
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If all of the comments in the widget are currently collapsed, then the “Collapse all” link will appear grayed out to indicate there is nothing for it to collapse. Likewise, if all of the comments in the widget are currently expanded, then “Expand all” will appear grayed out to indicate there is nothing for it to expand. As comments are expanded and collapsed, these two links will adjust themselves to appear grayed out or active as appropriate.
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Can I make it so all comments initially appear fully expanded without needing to click the links to expand them?
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Yes. Please see the “Hooks” section for documentation on the
c2c_expandable_dashboard_recent_comments_start_expandedfilter which allows for this. -
Does this work if JavaScript has been disabled in my browser?
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If JavaScript is disabled in a visitor’s browser, then all of the expand/collapse links and behavior aren’t enabled. But rest assured, there aren’t any errors. Why not implement a fallback if JS is disabled? If you’re going to click a link that causes a page reload to view the full comment, you might as well just click through to the comment.
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Does this plugin include unit tests?
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Yes. The tests are not packaged in the release .zip file or included in plugins.svn.wordpress.org, but can be found in the plugin’s GitHub repository.
Contributors & Developers
“Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments” has been translated into 3 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
3.0 (2024-09-08)
Highlights:
This notable update features improvements for accessiblity via ARIA attributes, relocates the various expand/collapse links, notes compatibility through WP 6.6+, updates unit tests and removes them from release packaging, updates copyright date (2024), and other internal improvements.
Details:
- UI:
- New: Add ARIA attributes to improve accessibility
- Add
aria-controlsandaria-expandedattributes to excerpt toggle links - Add
aria-hiddenattributes to comments excerpt and fulldivs as appropriate
- Add
- Change: Move the “Show more/less” links inline with the excerpt and full comment body rather than being comment row actions
- Change: Move the “Collapse/Expand all” links to alongside the comment filter links rather than below
- Change: Add ‘count’ class to the “Expand/Collapse All” links to match styling of WP admin
- Change: Add separator before “Expand All” link since the preceeding “Trash” link omits it
- Change: Move ‘hide-if-no-js’ class up into link container classes (added if necessary) so link-adjacent text can be hidden as well
- New: Add ARIA attributes to improve accessibility
- Documentation:
- Change: Note compatibility through WP 6.6+
- Change: Update copyright date (2024)
- Change: Reduce number of ‘Tags’ from
readme.txt - Change: Update screenshots
- Change: Tweak text formatting in
README.md
- Internals:
- Change: Add ELLIPSIS constant for ellipsis string and use it rather than harcoding string in various places
- Change: Prevent translations from containing unintended markup
- Change: Explicitly assign an array key to the added comment row action links
- Change: Define a version number when registering the styles
- Change: Bail earlier in functions when possible
- Change: Prevent unnecessary tabbed whitespace output
- Packaging/development:
- Change: Remove development and testing-related files from release packaging
- New: Add
.gitignorefile - Unit tests:
- Allow tests to run against current versions of WordPress
- New: Add
composer.jsonfor PHPUnit Polyfill dependency - Hardening: Prevent direct web access to
bootstrap.php - Change: In bootstrap, store path to plugin directory in a constant
- Change: Prevent PHP warnings due to missing core-related generated files
- New: Add a potential TODO item
2.8.2 (2021-09-16)
- Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.8+
- Unit tests:
- Change: Restructure unit test directories
- Change: Move
phpunit/intotests/ - Change: Move
phpunit/binintotests/
- Change: Move
- Change: Remove ‘test-‘ prefix from unit test file
- Change: In bootstrap, store path to plugin file constant
- Change: In bootstrap, add backcompat for PHPUnit pre-v6.0
- Change: Restructure unit test directories
2.8.1 (2021-04-10)
- Change: Escape text used in markup attributes (hardening)
- Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.7+
- Change: Update copyright date (2021)
Full changelog is available in CHANGELOG.md.